The education bill that Congress is likely to pass is a disaster in the making, and the White House and Capitol Hill insiders have known this for months, asserts veteran education journalist Tom Toch in this month's Washington Monthly. Still, the administration continues to press Congress to pass a bill by year's end - and Chairman Boehner says that this will indeed happen. As written, Toch believes, the legislation would hurt the nation's students more than it helps them. He sees a way out, but only if only Republicans and Democrats were to do something unlikely and join forces behind an accountability plan based on a national test of reading and math. Toch catalogues a long list of problems that have been identified with the accountability parts of the education bill now on the Hill and explains how value-added analysis of the results from national tests could make those problems go away. While national tests are famously opposed by both left and the right, Toch believes that they are within political reach now because of how badly people want accountability, how flawed the alternative is (federal accountability based on state standards and tests), and because of the public's warmth towards national initiatives since September 11th. Read more at "Bush's Big Test," by Thomas Toch, The Washington Monthly, November 2001
